Run rate are fictionalized projected earnings that firms like Microsoft are throwing out "run rates" to convince Wall St their cloud business is real and long term.

Importantly, it need to convince them that cloud is a viable swap-in to declining existing revenue streams made from things like selling on-premises software or selling software to makers of PCs.

Run rate is how a company’s financial performance would look if you extrapolate current results over a given (much longer) time period – not taking into account seasonal/buying fluctuations and other factors.

However, any £20bn target is surely looking wobbly.

Revenue from Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud unit that encompasses its flagship Azure infrastructure and platform as a service grew three per cent to $6.1bn in Q3.

In constant currency, Intelligent Cloud was up eight per cent. But in the second quarter, Intelligent Cloud grew five per cent (or 11 per cent in constant currency) to $6.3bn.

The Intelligent Cloud unit also includes Microsoft’s on-prem server software products, including Windows Server and SQL Server. Microsoft claimed revenue from Azure grew 120 per cent during the third quarter – but Azure grew 140 per cent in the quarter before.